Great “Client” Expectations

Guest author Michael Noland is a financial advisor and managing partner with Integrated Financial in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
 
One of the things I tell my clients is that if I’m doing my job as their advisor, they will be mad at me fairly often. This definitely gets their attention and then gives me an opportunity to have an important conversation about expectations.
 
To some extent, we probably all grapple with best practices for keeping clients happy as well as on track. Clients might call you about a hot stock tip their neighbor told them about, or they may feel strongly about being in a concentrated position but are lukewarm on the idea of a truly diversified portfolio. I like to tell my new clients, “If I told you I had a system that figured out how to time the market, you should run the other way immediately. (And I wouldn’t be working for a living if I actually could.)”

Your Thanksgiving Needs Corn Pudding

Corn pudding is more than just a side dish; it’s a warm hug on a cold day — the epitome of comfort food. This dish will fit right in with your Thanksgiving feast. At our table, it’s always the first to disappear (that may be my fault).
 
This delicious and inexpensive dish originated from Appalachia back in the pioneer days when corn was plentiful. The recipe eventually made it to my Grandma during a lesson in southern cooking from her Tennessean mother-in-law. My Grandma held on to that recipe and would bring over corn pudding in her yellow 9×13 Pyrex dish every Thanksgiving by popular demand. My Mom has since taken over and we continue to share our love for this special dish.
 
We have modified Grandma’s recipe over the years to make it more reliable, and below is my own personal version. I hope you enjoy this as much as I do!
 

Thoughts on Predictions and the 2016 Election

This blog is from our November issue of Portfolio Perspectives.
 
As the 2016 election results were coming in on the night of November 8, stock market futures seemed to point to a large stock market decline once the market opened the following morning.

 
Markets tend to dislike unexpected change, and as it became clear on election night that we’d have a shift in the political party of the presidency, market futures attempted to price that change in until ultimately opening up instead of down — despite what many “experts” were predicting.
 
This year we have seen a series of predictive failures, from the doom saying at the beginning of the year (“Sell everything”), to the failure of a peace referendum in Colombia, to Brexit.

Helping Your Clients Stay Calm Even When Markets Are Not

Since many of you may be getting questions about what the election results may mean for client portfolios, we have put together some resources to help educate clients and provide perspective.
 
The most important thing to keep in mind is that stocks have done well during the tenure of nearly every modern president, regardless of party affiliation. (See link below)
 
The results of the election, which caught most pollsters and pundits by surprise, are just one more in a long series of predictive failures this year, from the doom saying in January (“Sell everything”), to the failure of a peace referendum in Colombia, to Brexit.
 

5 Ways to Tell if Your Clients Are Advocates

In a successful referral-based business, your ideal clients are not just those you enjoy working with but those who enjoy working with you. In fact, these clients think so highly of your business that they become advocates for you.
 
Here are the five elements that must be present for your clients to be effective advocates:

What Happened Last Quarter… and Why Does it Matter?

Source: Chart sourced from How The Election Will Really Affect Your Investments, Money magazine, June 22, 2016. Returns from Morningstar Direct 2016 returns represent S&P 500 annual total return. Indexes are unmanaged baskets of securities that are not available for direct investment by investors. Index performance does not reflect the expenses associated with the management of an actual portfolio. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. All investments involve risk, including the loss of principal and cannot be guaranteed against loss by a bank, custodian, or any other financial institution.

Curious about what happened in the markets recently and how that may impact your long-term financial plan? Watch our three, short Making Sense of Markets videos to find out.
 

1. Performance: Remember the Royal Bank of Scotland’s decree to “sell everything” earlier this year? Hopefully you didn’t pay attention to it, as gains continued in Q3; only U.S. REITs declined marginally in value. The big reversal was solid gains from Emerging Markets Value, International Small Cap and International Value, which all outpaced the S&P 500.